[Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Darlington County Borough.
- Darlington (England). County Borough Council.
- Date:
- 1970
Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
Credit: [Report 1970] / Medical Officer of Health, Darlington County Borough. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![and urgent need for a complete register of people over 70, especially those living alone, so that needs can be better assessed. “ I should like to thank Dr. J. V. Walker, Medical Officer of Health, for his steady help during the years I have known him. Everyone in his Department has always been most helpful and he himself has given particular help with the recommendations for re-housing of elderly people.” § 3. MORBIDITY IN CHILDHOOD Thanks to the continued courtesy and co-operation of all consul- tant colleagues and equally of the secretarial staff of the Darlington Hospital Group your Medical Officer of Health received throughout 1970 copies of a large number of letters relating to in-patients of school and pre-school age. The claim is not made that the return was one hundred per cent complete, nor is this necessary from the point of view of obtaining a meaningful picture of morbidity requiring treat- ment in hospital. From the point of view of the children themselves, of course, the closer the returns converges on one hundred per cent the better since the copy of the consultant’s letter is added to the individual child’s medical dossier and so contributes to a full apprecia- tion of his health and of what has menaced it. A perusal of the figures, even as roughly classified as follows, shows some interesting features and as remarked in the Annual Report for last year the paucity of entries under the heading of “Ophthalmology” is to be explained by the service given directly by the ophthalmic consultants to the School Health Service where children of pre-school age may be seen at need by appointment. One cannot help feeling that many more patients than the seven noted here presented for advice and/or operation for the removal of their tonsils and adenoids. Admittedly this operation has become very much less frequent than in the still relatively recent past, when tonsils had to be little more than enlarged to be condemned for removal. It is now recognised that such removal is rarely necessary unless the tonsils are themselves clearly sources of infection and liable to cause damage elsewhere. The total number of patients reported on in 1970 was 1,400 as compared with 1,622 in 1969. Among the changes between the two years one may note a decline last year of the number of letters received from the consultant paediatrician, Dr. D. Andrew, or from the Child- ren s Departments of other hospitals (42 as compared with 77). This feature almost certainly correlates with the unsatisfactory situation with regard to a paediatrician in the Darlington Hospital Group, which one would think is large enough to justify a whole-time appointment or itself. As you will know, Dr. Andrew’s terms of reference are main y with Bishop Auckland, and he only attends Darlington to see ?,rJ~aS; in, tl]eory Patients referred to him by other consultants. It is . ,5FS 9®^ that the Regional Hospital Board is considering a remedy nis snuation but it has been under consideration already for several](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b29149514_0054.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
